Strike Shuts Down Most Broadway Shows

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON NY Times

Published: November 10, 2007

After a morning of confusion and anxiety during which members of Local One, the stagehands union, met and the producers waited to see what would happen, the stagehands strike has officially begun. Union members are holding picket signs in front of theaters and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the parent union of Local One, issued a statement confirming the walkout.

The stagehands took their picket signs to the wet sidewalks around 10 a.m. today, after a meeting of Local One, their union, at the Westin New York on West 43rd Street.

Twenty-seven Broadway shows, including “Wicked,” “Jersey Boys” and “The Lion King” were shuttered, starting with “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical” which was to raise its curtain at 11 a.m.

Only eight shows, which are in theaters on a separate contract with the union, are still running: “Cymbeline,” “Mary Poppins,” “Mauritius,” “Pygmalion,” “The Ritz,” “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” “Xanadu” and “Young Frankenstein.”

This is the second strike on Broadway in less than five years; the four-day musician walkout in 2003 was the first in almost three decades. But this is the first time Local One, a 121-year old union, has called a strike on Broadway.

Producers have made plans to give refunds to people who have bought tickets to shows that would be canceled. The first show to be shuttered by the walkout is “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical,” which begins performances at 11 a.m.

On Thursday, after two long days of negotiating with the League of American Theaters and Producers, the stagehands’ union was given the authority to strike by its parent union, the last step necessary before a strike can be called.

A session scheduled for Friday did not take place, and all around Broadway, producers, stagehands and just about everyone else in the industry were buzzing with theories about when or if the stagehands would walk out.

Local One officials had been expected to give a few days’ notice before a strike was called, though a note on the union’s Web site said that the parent union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, would advise Local One as to when the strike would begin.

The talks, which have been going on since before the union’s contract expired in July, broke down over the issue of work rules.

The contract with Local One has strict rules governing how many stagehands must be called to work, what kind of tasks they can perform and how long the work calls can be scheduled. League members say the rules inevitably lead to long periods of time when stagehands are on the clock with nothing to do.

The league has been pushing for more flexibility in deciding how many stagehands are needed for work and when they are needed, and they have offered a package of raises in return for that flexibility.

James J. Claffey, the president of the union, has said that the stagehands would be willing to make changes to the rules in return for benefits of equal value. But there is no way to tell how much work the stagehands would lose under the rules the producers are proposing, Mr. Claffey said, and so it would be difficult to gauge the value of what the league has been offering in return.

It is unclear how long a strike would last. League members have privately speculated that the pressure to get Broadway up and running again would keep the strike from going longer than three or four days. Union officials say that a strike could go for weeks if necessary; Mr. Claffey has already turned down an offer from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to help in the negotiations.

By taking a few cents out of every ticket over the past few years, the producers have amassed a $20 million fund to help weather a shutdown by covering fixed costs, like insurance. But for shows that do not have much in the way of advance sales — sales that could be refunded — a strike that went on for more than a few days could be fatal.

Local One, which has around 2,200 members, roughly a quarter of whom work on Broadway, has accumulated its own $4.1 million emergency stockpile. The union has set aside an additional $1 million to help members of the other unions that will be out of work during a strike.

Union officials also point out that there are more than a thousand non-Broadway jobs in Local One that stagehands can rotate into while they are not working on Broadway, but that rotation system has become more complicated now that the strike by the Writers Guild of America has left Local One members in the television industry without work as well.

Kate Hammer contributed reporting.